"Our nation was founded by intellectuals."
This quote comes from an interesting little Wordpress essay I just found called The War on Intellectualism, by Julian Edney. I have known since junior high that appearing to be too smart or intellectual was, in our backward culture, a liability rather than an asset. I have been reading the autobiography of Leonard Woolf (husband of Virginia Woolf) and early on, speaking of his childhood, he asserts, “Then as now, intellectuals were despised.”
That's why my favorite TV character right now is Sheldon (played by Jim Parsons) on The Big Bang Theory. (Watching TV doesn't HAVE to make you stupider...you just have to moderate and be careful what you watch. For instance, stay away from Paris Hilton's New BFF.)
You might say, "You read too many books." And I might reply, "You should read more books." (US Magazine doesn't count!)
I want to help create a wave of "intellectual chic" to get people back to the critical-thinking, revolutionary, enlightened, intellectual roots from which this country grew. Whether that's still possible or not, I don't know...but I have to try. I don't want to settle for a dumbed-down world.
"Doing the research for this essay," Edney writes, "Has turned me into an appreciator of eccentrics, the difficult people not invited to dinner."
I would like to invite those people to dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment